Indian people watch high-tide waves as they stand at the Bay of Bengal coast in Vishakhapatnam, India, on Oct. 12, 2013. / AP

by Mandakini Gahlot, Special for USA TODAY

by Mandakini Gahlot, Special for USA TODAY

NEW DELHI - A gigantic cyclone, one of the strongest ever to hit the Bay of Bengal, pounded India's eastern cost with heavy winds and rain Saturday, as nearly a million people fled the region.

More than 18 hours after the storm - the strongest to hit India in more than a decade - made landfall in eastern Orissa state, officials said they knew of only nine fatalities, most of them people killed by falling branches or collapsing buildings in the rains ahead of the cyclone.

The final death toll will almost certainly climb, and parts of the cyclone-battered coast remain isolated by downed communication links and blocked roads.

Hundreds of trees were uprooted before the eye of the storm even made landfall early evening local time and flights, trains and shipping operations were canceled and power shut down in six districts in the coastal area.

The India Meteorological Department said the cyclone made landfall near Gopalpur, India, with sustained winds of 124 mph - equivalent to a Category 3 hurricane.

Cyclone Phailin caused one of the largest evacuation operations in Indian history, with 870,000 people moved to higher ground in the coastal state of Orissa.

Electricity had been cut off in the entire state of Odisha as a precaution, said Indian navy retired commodore A.K Patnaik, in Bhubaneshwar, who was reached by phone before he shut it down to conserve power.

Satellite images showed the cyclone filling nearly the entire Bay of Bengal, an area larger than France that has seen the majority of the world's worst recorded storms, including a 1999 cyclone that killed 10,000.

"If it's not a record, it's really, really close," University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy told the Associated Press. "You really don't get storms stronger than this anywhere in the world ever."

The storm slowed significantly overnight, with some areas reporting little more than breezy drizzles by midday Sunday, but meteorologists said parts of the region would face heavy rains and winds for the next 24 hours.

"Its intensity is still strong, but after crossing the coast it has weakened considerably," Sharat Sahu, a top official with the Indian Meteorological Dept. in Orissa, told reporters.

To compare it to killer U.S. storms, McNoldy said Phailin is nearly the size of Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,200 people in 2005 and caused devastating flooding in New Orleans, but also has the wind power of 1992's Hurricane Andrew, which packed 165 mph winds at landfall in Miami.

"The storm has the potential to cause huge damage," L.S. Rathore, director-general of the Indian Meteorlogical Department told reporters.

In Behrampur, about 7 miles inland from where the eye of the cyclone struck, there were reports of only three deaths early Sunday morning.

"We have stopped all cargo operations," Paradip Port Trust Chairman Sudhanshu Shekhara Mishra told the Press Trust of India, a local news agency. "We have set up control rooms and are ready with a contingency plan. We have cleared all vessels. People have been evacuated from low-lying areas."

The state has created 800 shelters as government workers and volunteers put together food packages for relief camps.

"I don't want people to panic," said Naveen Patnaik, chief minister of Odisha told PTI, calling for everyone to do their part in helping relief operations.

Still, some didn't want to leave their mud-and-thatch homes, particularly vulnerable to the storm.

"We will get over the storm," said Seetha Reddy, a fisher in Gopalpur who was reluctant to leave her house but was forced by the police to shift to a shelter, told the Hindustan Times.

More than 100,000 people from the low-lying areas of neighboring Andhra Pradesh state had been evacuated. The sea has already pushed inland as much as 130 feet in parts of that state, officials said.

Some locals were at a loss.

"I wanted to go back (home), but I have no money," Dinga Ram, a laborer working at the port and who is from a state hundreds of miles north of it, told the Hindustan Times. "I do not know what to do."